Weaponised Flywheel Experiment Fails Explosively | Savage Builds
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- Опубліковано 18 бер 2021
- After finessing the design of their experimental WW2 weapon, Adam Savage and NASA engineer Adam Stelzner are ready to put it to the test. It does not go to plan. So, what do you do when your experimental WW2 weapon fails spectacularly in the field? You blow it up of course.
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50k project and you do 1 test on super soft ground? Adam....
Miss propper testing aswell ^^
I bet if it were up to him they would've tried it again. But since they're on the networks dime, I bet he wasn't afforded that opportunity.
@@thetimeisrite give it time. I dont see anyway he doesn't go back to this at some point. Its gonna eat at him
more like Discovery 🙄
*Adams
How was that not worth a do-over?
Problem identified, why then why abandon the project?
No. NO. N O !
Because they got their views from people like us, so win or fail they get paid the same without having to spend more time and money on the project
Right?! I would share the series, had it ended differently.
Most likely because the time allowed for the project was decided in advance and written in the contract. And that any overtime would either make them lose money, or interfere with other projects.
because they ran out of time and budget. They are making a TV show, not a functional Pandandrum
Probably the cost associated with having to do a do over. In one of Adam's UA-cam videos, he mentioned that redoing a certain shot for Mythbusters could have cost 10s of thousands of dollars. Probably something the network didn't feel like shelling out.
"Ok so we identified the problem and we know how to fix it!"
Next step: Blows it up....
Episode budget: fully consumed
Production schedule: within acceptable margins
On to the next episode I guess. *shrug*
The moral of the story: Sometimes you just gotta give up after your first try
...wait what?
Especially if you don’t know how to open a parachute.
Probably has to do with filming and budget from the network constraints preventing them from being able to keep working on it.
such a disappointing end to an otherwise legendary project... do better Adams 😂
Its was sunset, no time to reset, all about money and poor planing for more shoots then one.
out of a budget
What? You gave up just like that? What an anti-climax
Probably ran out of time. Television production schedules are tight.
Your wife knows all about anticlimax
I---n---v---e---s---t---i---n---B~T---C---$---E---T---H
W----H----A----T----S---A---P---P
+1----2----1----3----9----2----1----9----7----5----9-----
@@irishsavage8715 I'm not so sure she does mate, not since I've been round 🤣👍
they have budget and time, send adam some 100$ to crowdfund it bro.
That was anticlimactic. I wish they'd replaced the braking system instead of just blowing it up.
And maybe try it on dry ground, where it doesn't sink in the mud.
It was the mud more than anything
itsClearIntentionalFail
@@ph30nix62 The mud / thinness of the wheels.
They probably weren't alowed to set that thing off anyway. It would be uncotrolable, very dangerous. This thing never had a chance to work and it's not the brakes. It was too big. You can see hey went with cheap production process, if you want something to spin fast it has to be balanced otherwise - fail.
@@ph30nix62 yes only mud
I've never seen Adam give up so quickly. That mud didn't seem to have worked in their favor.
Why didn't they try a second time instead of blowing it up? Such an unsatisfactory end
Because they likely burned out the brakes in the process and it was already strapped with detcord -
Time and money. They had a deadline and a budget, they couldn't go back to the drawing board to redo the braking system. Once they determined a second try with the same build would be the same result, not much to do.
Adam has said he'd love to revisit the project, say if savage builds got another season, but for this project that was not an option.
It wouldnt work. The brakes wasted all the energy as heat.
I know right, I hate unsatisfactory endings. I normally ask for a discount if the massage lady doesnt end satisfactorily.
That would be a network decision, not a builder and maker decision.
I feel like I could have got something stuck in the mud and blown it up without help from NASA engineers..
You said it brother!🤣
Or without any help, actually.
There is a reason they cant seem to figure out how to get to the moon again.
That's a saturday night for me
@@seth7745 What are you even talking about?
Adam is a pretty cool dude because he could invest a ton of time and effort into a project and still walk away smiling when it all fails horribly and nobody gets hurt.
Great demonstration that common sense and engineering aren't always the same thing. Well done!
Right. Common sense is just a euphemism for shared stupidity.
Two absolute legends...this video was not finished though.
Maybe we will get a revisit.
@@AmateurVolcanologist But sadly not spent on education so people can learn the difference between "your" and "you're".
@@AmateurVolcanologist 😂😂 perfectly done.
@@AmateurVolcanologist That is sad..... you can't even make a sandwich? Well, two areas you missed in school then :)
@@AmateurVolcanologist :)
Honestly, this is the worst porject I have ever seen Adam make.
Agree. Adam plus an actual rocket scientist and this is the best they could do.
Don't agree, attempt not made at full scale would be a bad project.
Yeah, and part one felt supremely unsafe _if_ it was functional. You could see it rotate laterally on the saw horses it was strapped to, if it managed to tip over and go nuts they all could have been endangered. They were in a closed room like 15 ft away from it with no barrier... Step up your game Adam!
Thinking same thing! Super lame project
Painting a solar symbol on a circular object and the setting it aflame on a field? Seems like a ritual not an experiment.
"Why you no move forwards!?"
-Suez Canal
The little red truck getting stuck in the beginning was foreshadowing... LOL
You guys should have used truck air brakes with dual spring chambers. This way you could just release the air pressure and the brakes would engage, plus you’d have brakes designed for 80k pounds.
Indeed!
Yes clearly their brakes didn't fully engage seeing the flywheels were still turning after the wheel had stopped.
ditch the brake rotors and just grab the edge of the flywheel. Way more torque, and much more mass to prevent overheating. More powerful caliper system would have helped a lot as well.
Even thought it's true what you said, it may have added an amount of danger they weren't ready for. I've seen those canisters explode before, it has enormous destruction. So if they did that and the flywheels gave out they could have essentially an overpowered grenade detonating near them.
@@TheKlopka so the 400 pound flywheels spinning at 1000 rpms is safe enough but air brake chambers would push the limit overboard. Oh and don’t forget the bottles of gas and set cord. Those are safe too.
They picked the muddiest spot to park it in. Mud stops everything.
you'd think they would at least have done a test run on a level surface to see how fast the rig could go. nope, run number 1 is in battlefield conditions.
@@grelgen because they are remaking what the ppl in world war 2 did. they made one that goes through mud but it never worked right.
@Mogulis Valar Fr... If a multi-thousand horsepower tank with mud-tracks can spin in place in mud, then a slick smooth wheel won't fare much better
@@andrewjensen8189 Irrelevant even if true. Lack of traction was not a significant factor.
Mud was not significant. WW2 tanks spun their tracks bc they were floating on a wider plane (ie, the relatively flat belly) that held the tracks off of terra firma. The culprit here was absence of torque.
“Why you no move forward?” had me dying.
I'll never get tired of Adam laughing maniacally at the reveal of something new
Did I miss a video or did we go straight from “too fast for these stands” to “too muddy for success”?
That's what you get if you decide that budget cuts are more important than more satisfied viewers. I am unhappy too. :(
Maybe you did miss the video, mud had nothing to do with it.
Their best guess is that the brakes didn't lock up properly. These brakes acted like a clutch in a manual transmission, burning off difference in RPM as heat. Since they never locked up properly, they used the mechanical energy in the flywheels to produce heat instead of propelling the vehicle. To get this working, they would have to replace the activation system shown at 5:08 with something faster and stronger, though they likely would have needed stronger brakes as well. A typical car moving at 80km/h has around 325KJ of energy, these flywheels had close to 750KJ. The car takes less than half the load per front tire (too lazy to get into front/rear split so we'll give the front the benefit of the doubt) and decelerates at 1G (9.81m/s^2) so 2.2 seconds, giving around ~75KW per brake. These have to do it in under 1s, so closer to 375KW. You'd need better-than-F1 brakes to make this project work, and given that their budget was 50k and a set of F1 brakes eat a quarter of that... I think you can see why they blew it up.
@@CuthbertNibbles No, I saw the video. You obviously didn’t read my comment.
@@Clintotron mud had nothing to do with success, honey.
@@KingNefiiria sure thing, sugar. I didn’t say it was “too muddy” was the only factor. If the brakes had worked as intended, it still could have spun out with the smooth flat wheels.
I wish they had kept trying
Forgot to factor in muddy ground.
Now try it on an airfield runway!
When you boil it down to its essence every TV show Adam Savage has ever done has just been an outlet for his pyromania.
You know how some monks spend weeks building beautiful artwoorks of sand only to sweep them away, Adam does this with engineering
Sure but they don't stop half way through
Guess that's why monks don't rule the world
@@hellospam879879 exactly you know everyone wants engineers like Adam to rule the world lol
My mom used to say if you dont have anything nice to say then dont say anything at all. I am going to listen to my mom.
My mum used to say that too, but she also said a lot of stuff which wasn't very nice.
@@1992jamo Moms will be moms
@@1992jamo that falls under mom rule #2. Do as I say, not as I do.
But you commented...
I'll say something because you said too.
"The wise speak, because they have something to tell. The fool speaks because he wants to say something"
One other suggestion; try moving the brake caliper to the outer edge of the flywheel itself instead of on that tiny little automotive brake rotor. Applying the brakes directly to the flywheel, at its edge, which is much farther from the center of the axle, would apply more rotational force.
Lounching just the spinning disc would be a deadly war instrument in itself
I feel like adam was like, we paid for all this stuff and camera crew, its muddy and im done with my obligation technically because i never said it would work. im blowing it up. The poor engineer seemed sad!
I don’t think that was up to them, more like Discovery wanted to finish the series without spending any more money which is sad.
@@cobralyoner They'd rather invest in another reality TV I guess..
Yeah he was definitely not happy to have to give up and fail at his calculations. He was keen to iterate the changes.
They should have just ditched the outer wheels and let the flywheels roll on an abandoned airstrip for maximum carnage
We used to do this with old hard drives. Let the motors spin up the disks with them unbolted and then tip it sideways so they would fall off the spindle.
Exactly. That is great thinking. Removing unnecessary parts instead of falling into trap of optimization of existing concept.
This is, by far one of the coolest projects/experiments I have seen.
The mechanical connection to the flywheels with the motor, the disconnection is a bit random, I would have thought of some type of electromagnetic clutch, fantastic experiment with this type of mechanism.
So a tractor with wheels 10 times wider than that got stuck in the mud but a NASA engineer didn't realise that would too. Hope his boss didn't see this episode.
that tractor had:
a. smaller diameter wheels, meaning a smaller contact area with the ground.
b. The weight of the tractor is a lot more.
So the pressure of the tractorwheels on the ground is a lot higher than of that contraption that they build.
@@larswilms8275 actually tractors have rubber tires that can compress a little, meaning they have a larger contact area on the ground. The tractor wheel still has 10x more ground contact then this thing.
And the average tractor is only 4 times heavier than this machine and has a lot more horse power.
The original post is right. A tractor is better in every way but still can easily get stuck in mud.
The mud wasn't the issue, it's the brakes
@@Squiffel A 600+ lbs machine on a muddy field with a tiny amount of ground contact. Mud was definitely an issue.
@@callumsworld2503 of course it effected it, but that flywheel had enough power to launch it 40 miles an hour, but it left the trailer at practically the same speed you'd get from just gravity rolling down a ramp. The mud wasn't the issue.
Wow, this is the guy who took us to Mars
But they test things before going to Mars. This was their only test. They should have used better brakes and in better conditions (hard soil, pavement, etc).
But he wasn't working with Adam.
@@dishmanw Yes they test them very well before flight, they don't spend 50k on stuff they spend millions so they better work.
Adam has his own 'Burning Man' finale every day.
This was fun! Next please 🙏
Wouldn't you lose a ton of energy to heat dissipation in the disc brakes too?
That's why more powerful brakes would transfer more energy. There would be less time spent generating heat (though the heat generated would be more intense...). I'm curious what the outcome would be if a torque converter could be used instead of disk brakes. There would still be heating of the fluid, but would it be more efficient at transferring the mechanical energy?
@@NathanielHatley
Like an 800 HP super car at redline and dump the clutch.
@@NathanielHatley I was thinking about that too.
@@NathanielHatley Pretty sure that is completely unrelated. The heat energy lost should be the same regardless of the brake speed. They need to solve this with conservation of angular momentum, not energy. The only way speed matters here is static vs dynamic coefficient of friction (for the whole system rolling)
@@chadarmstrong7458 Exactly that. It needs a clutch, not brakes.
The disc brakes looked so small especially compared with a performance car and all they kept talking about was how hard it will be to stop the 2 flywheels. 😣 I'm sure someone could calculate the stopping power required on the paper build.
Need an instant axle lock, but it would be hard not to bend or break with that much instant torque applied
If only there'd been an engineer around somewhere.
I worked for a press company and we use flywheels with a clutch system. Seeing a 20,000 lb steel flywheel at full speed is frightening. We had one old press fail and the flywheel came loose and sped across the plant floor going through concrete walls
"This thing, once spinning, cannot be stopped!"
Six inches of mud: "I'm about to ruin this contraptions whole career."
That was predictable. Brakes are like a clutch, but the clutch connects to a transmission. You can't leave a stoplight in 5th gear.
Thats actually a perfect analogy
so would it have been beneficial to put a gear set between the flywheel and the axle? because then you trade rpm for torque, higher RPM will still be hard for the brakes to clamp down on, but obviously higher torque doesnt help either.
so maybe they should have put the brake calipers on the ends of the flywheels, then they would have a mechanical advantage but then again, its the same problem, trading speed for torque... would have been great if they tried that
I was thinking a clutch would kinda obviously have worked but the brake idea just seems like expecting too much of the material with such a large force
An't that the truth.
How could they not know that narrow, heavy wheels do NOT roll in soggy mud without getting stuck, no matter how they are powered?
The drive system here is completely different. The mud has very limited effect. There is no vehicle with negative inertia to overcome. The vehicle IS the wheel IS the drive system.
Because they are engineers
@@josephmiller997 then by that explanation it would be safe to assume it wouldn't have gone any further on a hard surface?
@@gwailo27 I wouldn’t think very much.
@@gwailo27 the only form of acceleration the wheel would have received would have been from the initial energy exchange. The brakes couldn't stop the flywheel fast enough, so the transfer ended up mostly being lost as heat.
A paved road would have been just as disappointing, the ramp would have likely provided more acceleration at that point, completely negating the entire point of the experiment
A learning curve paved by a thousand failures.
I would love to see this idea revisited
Having to hear him repeatedly say "panjandrum" throughout all these videos, with no pay off, caused me physical pain.
you make a design, test it, identify the problem, then give up?
A wee bit of respect for Mr. Savage, lost. This was not only anti-climatic, but could easily be a success.
@@copperboltwire320 Adam likely was not in control of that. Watch Tested, he absolutely follows through when he is in charge of a project. But this has writers producers, budget managers, a whole massive corporate entity behind the episode. I would bet anything that it's Discovery's fault we're not seeing a conclusion, they got their ad revenue, they're satisfied. It is what it is.
@@Enzar17 Discovery channel went down the drain years ago now. It was ok in the mythbusters era, they at least had a few interesting shows, now it's all just fake reality shows, building "choppers", and other such drivel. I haven't had cable in years, but I usually check each year around christmas when I'm visiting family that does. So far every year, my conclusion has been the same - I'm not missing anything by not having cable.
Fantastic
Half the speed means only one quarter the energy. On top of that, this is a great example for checking your assumptions:
They assumed all that energy would go into rotation. Instead, most of it went into heating up the brakes and deforming a little bit of mud.
I saw the brake issue instantly.... you didn't have anywhere near the surface area to stop that much rotating mass especially with that diameter flywheels. Do it again but use drum brakes from a semi truck, supplied air unlocks them so you could pressurize the system and have a large dump valve to release the air pressure and automatically engage the emergency parking brake and away it goes
Or something like what the sawstop uses, physically jamming the rotating mechanism.
Yes... But that would not have made it lose the kinetic energy. If you were right, it would simply keep spinning. It was the friction loss from the surface/ground that caused the drain on kinetic energy.
Even the truck brakes would fail... Each of those flywheels weigh 450lbs spinning at 800rpm. I knew any traditional brake transfer system would fail back at their shop... That's why they have run away truck ramps
Yep.. Those small brake pads was not going to do anything...
Adam got his do$h and the net work got their ad revenue... This is what I've learnt this "episode"...
I think you should just spun the flywheels up till they reach top speed or fail 😂
Congrats, you made heat
I could tell you from the get go that there's not gonna be any kind of brake that will grasp onto the wheel with enough bite from the massive rotating force to actual propel the contraption to the anticipated speed. You would need something that physically locks it up near instantly to transfer all or most of that energy. Not gonna happen.
If they had something that instantaneously locked up brakes, I would expect it to rip the big wheel's webbing apart before it crosses the starting line.
@@teardowndan5364 You are right! The stresses would be so huge that it would rip things apart! Most people in comment section do not get it.
@@teardowndan5364 yes most definitely can't do a sudden lock up but need something stronger than those brakes
@@itptires What they need is some sort of harmonic balancer equivalent that can buffer the shock load without dissipating most of the energy as heat.
You'd need a series of exploding bolts to instantaneously lock the two disc where the bolts had some flex . With enough of them it could work to some degree
Drum brakes might have been a better solution, as they self energise theyd have jammed fully on with minimal input
indeed I agree with you.. but then I thought: Ok so you get a more instant torque transfer to a wheel that has shiny metal surface for friction contact with the ground on a up hill in two feet deep mud... it would have spun out looking for traction or spun into the mud under all that weight until the energy was dissipated. The more I look at this whole thing the more puzzled I get at how some of these decisions where made. Especially with all the nasa maths floating around.
Meh they started with the same amount of energy anyways - it wasn’t a braking or transfer issue (they’d need that energy to get to the target anyways even if they released it later) - the thing was just never going to work. The mud soaked up the energy like a sponge and they didn’t show ANY of the camera shots of that happening even though we all know they had a million of them. Kinda pathetic.
@@EstorilEm It was absolutely a braking/force transfer issue. All of that force turned into brake pad wear vs forward momentum. It would have been spinning/sinking in the mud if it was the mud's fault.
Smooth wheels without tread on soft mud. This is awesome.
A GLORIOUS Mythbusters finale!!!
Hahaha. Guys, that’s a really cool idea, and a great way to propel the wheel forward, but...
Having driven trucks on 44” diameter tires, brake efficiency diminishes RAPIDLY as tire diameter and mass increases.
I’d love to see you try this again! I noticed the servo pushing the master cylinder applied the brakes at a rate less than a full “panic” stop, as you stated. What about using a nitrogen charged accumulator and solenoid, along with larger brakes and brake lines?
This is insanely expensive, but would allow a large volume of oil charged to 4,500-6,000 psi, to flow to the calipers, as opposed to pressure rising over time with the master cylinder.
Wait a second.... *remembers slow mo guys videos of spinning CD's and records* I KNOW WHY IT WOBBLES! I KNEW THAT NOISE WHEN IT SPINS WAS FAMILIAR TOO!
Maybe use a massive clutch pack, like kind they use in top fuel?
I like Jamies motto. "When in doubt C4!"
How about just making the wheels the flywheels and dropping it when up to speed. Probably misses the original intention, but I reckon it wound go!
Worked for the dam busters
Well, it was more a exciting result that opening Al Capone's vault. Lol
Lolol. Nice fellas!
Leave it to savage to make a fail look like a win;) Great explosions. The terrain I feel to do with alot of he issues.
I was hoping they accidentally spun it in the wrong direction and it went back through the shed
One thing that will always make me nostalgic and make me miss my childhood watching Mythbusters after school is Adam's laugh...
I miss Mythbusters. One if the few shows that made learning entertaining. The scientific method at its finest. (I still remember them launching water heaters through a roof)
Not going to try again???
meeting
"ok guys we could just put some wood on the ground so the mud wo.........."
"NOOO!!!!"
or just do it on pavement.
My thoughts on why it did not work as advertised are that the ground was soft, sodden with moisture even, so the wheel was being forced to not only climb a hill, but it was having to also climb over a berm of dirt because the wheel sank into the ground.
Centrifugal lock up clutch, job sorted.
I love this idea & I'd really like see this revisited!!
I just watched this video and the other flywheel one. Both suffer from the same issue: I feel like I jumped into the end of an episode of something. They lack story telling.
I need the build up. I need the idea conception. The work before. The transport. All that stuff builds tension.
Without story telling, I don't get a chance to care...
Yep - this is what happens when people used to work for televiosion shows now try to do youtube xD
Horrible experience... Not like anything you would see on my channel.... ;P
Was this not an episode of....Savage Builds... on discover channel aus?
So yes, you literally did skip through a real episode. That's why it feels like that.
Nice to see them Vibing even if they not really were successfull🎉
Use wheelchair but still awesome at the end of it. great commute, great science method, great experience. love myth B. and lol
Apply the brake calipers on the outer edge of the flywheels.
Exactly, those little brakes can't do anything so close to the axle with all that weight spinning so far out.
I have been thinking “extend the moment arm” for nearly everything on this design.
Half the time I think they let it fail because it would work too well and the idea is dangerous. Wider tracks, Balanced ring flywheel instead of discs. Clutch instead of brakes.
A centrifugal clutch on this scale would be insane.
@@sirukin7849 I wouldn't know. What about a heavy duty spring loaded truck clutch? One shot, trip and release? or multiple brakes on the disc? ma=F=ma Wouldn't that mean the resting part had more inertia than the spinning part? Rings instead of discs.
If the flywheels were perfectly balanced, they could spin it way faster and it would work.
The energy stored in a Flywheel goes by the SQUARE of the Rotational Velocity.
So there was more energy in that missing 300 RPM than when you had put in up to ~700 RPM.
they should use smaller wheel, or larger flywheel.
They should spin all the wheel, not only the 2 small flywheels....
....and run away as fast as they can when it's released at full speed.
18 wheeler tires work like a champ at around 75 MPH they have been seen on video smashing into houses and parked cars over a mile after coming off the vehicle!!!
@@MrClaypogue These tyres are already at full speed and spinning fast when they leave the vehicle, that's why they can easily go far away.
@@yannickl5976 do both, spin up the flywheels first then spin up the main wheel seperately, then use a clutch to engage the flywheel when the main wheel slows down instead of brakes
@@xymaryai8283 Go on the top of a hill, spin the whole thing at 1500 rpm then release it. :)
The disk brakes sometimes used on some of the newer gearless elevator hoist motors would work better. I have seen them stop a drive sheave almost immediately when applied, and that's moving way more weight around.
It's always fun when something explodes!
This definitely needs a revisit with what you established. It must be possible to improve it and achieve the original intention ?
Also a centrifugal option.... weights and springs on the flywheel that will open and engage at a pre determined RPM and those engage with the wheels locking it together and away it goes.... think massive G80 locking differential or something along those lines
If you cannot use dynamic balancing, you should at least balance each disk plane statically. This would really help with the vibration issue.
Plywood lined up for the beginning of the roller zone would have helped the wheel get some momentum going through the muddiest spot. The mud greatly stopped it's ability to get rolling.
Would you be able to recreate what you've done on an airstrip? It would travel a lot further than it did on the mud.
Still glad he’s making videos. This guy rocks
Great project, and ironic that you followed the same mistakes process of the tank designers of the world wars: tracks too thin, not enough traction, unstable design, not enough power. It was haemorrhaging energy before it even left the platform, then hit the mud with bendy, thin, smooth tracks. For what its worth, this was a disastrous concept when they invented it in WWII
Idd
I FREAKING LOVE Physics!
I would absolutely love if Adam Savage and Adam Stelzner came back together to make a V2 version of this panjandrum.
What kind of ground friction was assumed in the calculations. I can see both the effect of low friction, thereby grip, and a "glue"-like friction not allowing it to move being possible.
wouldn't have mattered if it had taken off at appropriate speed. well, thats not true, obviously it would have affected overall performance, but it wouldn't have stopped it as soon as it did.
the problem they had is that the breaking system was too weak. what they were hoping to do was to close the breaks, causing all of the momentum in the flywheel to immediately transfer into the big wheel. what happened instead is the breaks slid on the big wheel. transferring only a bit of that energy into turning the big wheel. but causing the flywhelels to rapidly lose their momentum.
Usually a clutch relies on a great deal of surface area on the flywheel... more leverage, too.
That feeling when you show up to a city fireworks display only to find out all they have are sparklers..
Headline should read: 'filming deadline finishes wheel'
You’d need to put like giant racing brake shoes/pads on the flywheels to grab hold and get that energy transfer, and even then it might just break apart.
You gave up waaay too easy.
Maybe you could use a device like the SawStop safety thing, to immediately transfer the energy from the flywheel.
I truly think that Adam would make an amazing super villain.
I think it also lost a bit of energy to the mud.
also, something like a clutch instead of brakes might have worked better.
A clutch would just slip amd break.
@@BlarghMeow
Beefier brake, then.